A TIME OF MUSIC,
A TIME OF MAGIC
Author: Joseph L.S. Terrell
2004 Reissue Edition
6"x9" Trade Paperback
Retail: $14.95; 226pp
ISBN 978-0-9747685-9-6

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A TIME OF MUSIC, A TIME OF MAGIC
Author: Joseph L.S. Terrell

Four-Bar Intro: One jazz horn singing with a search, a slow reaching that begins to develop, begins to build up into an introduction for something fast and frantic, even though the playing is yet slow and with a search; there are whole-note, heavy chords behind it now, building steadily toward a cry--for the singing is always like a cry--not of the music alone but of the people behind it, and not of the men with the talent alone but of the ones who feel it and can never express it, always living it, and of the world that is somehow different from all the rest because it moves with the singing and, too, with the heavy chords: a world made up of the bad taste of cigarettes and riding all night, of getting wonderfully drunk on clean cold beer in a hotel room in the summer, of watching the women getting drunk and uncoiling themselves and all the beautiful slickness that follows, of watching the sun come up when you are not quite sober or tired either, of three or four of you roaring into a café, where people are eating breakfast and sullen because of a day's starting again, and ordering steaks and being boisterous, of the bad taste of cigarettes again and the sickness and emptiness when're you sober late in the afternoon and the complete boredom of playing a musical instrument the same way a man runs an elevator; then trying to make it more exciting, trying to stay drunk from now on, each day, until it all mounts up to getting a little more tired, a little more weary; and knowing once when you were drunk, playing the bass and looking down the strings over the bridge at the polished black shoe tapping out the time on an imitation marble floor, and your fingers moving strongly and numbly, but strongly still, that we are all like the strings on a fiddle that stay tuned sharp and are kept taut all the time and will break pretty soon, and that after the first tawny of breaking there is only silence, except for a few who can still hear the soft vibrations for a while and slightly louder just before the sound goes completely away.

Chapter 1

In less than an hour now the darkness would go completely away. Already the sky was taking on a dull silverness, and the stars were faded and pale, a reminder that they were something left over from another night.
     Though this day, a Saturday in very late August, would be heavy-hot and still, the predawn air now was cool and smelled moist. In some places where the flat Southern countryside took an especially low dip, or where a small creek slipped toward the coast, a thin breath-mist rose a few feet from the ground. In just a little while the mist would be gone.
     The land, which in the middle of the state wrinkled with hills, smoothed out toward the coast, and the hardwood trees and the tall pines gave way to shorter ones, and flat dusty fields of tobacco appeared, and there were poor patches of barely attended cotton, and the reddish dirt of the middle of the state turned a dark gray and brown, and closer to the coast it lightened from the sand. An occasional elm or cypress stood ghosted with moss.
     Weaving diagonally across the state, south and east, a narrow, well-paved highway softened its curves the nearer it came to the sands of the coast until, finally, it stretched straight ahead almost as far as you could see. Along this flat highway an awkwardly long car pulling a two-wheeled trailer van sped in the darkness; its settled, even movement told it had traveled a long distance and that its driver had found his speed and was sticking to it. The headlights were still needed, but mile after mile as the car moved toward the ocean, the dawn took away from their glow, and it would not be long before they would be clicked down to the parking lights and then off completely.
     The car was a conventional sedan, except that an extra length had been put into its middle, giving it three doors on each side instead of two and so three rows of seats. Made originally for the Army Air Corps, it had been sold as surplus shortly after the war. Both the trailer and the car had been painted a bright blue. In eight-inch gold letters along the sides of the car were the words, "Sully Johnson and His Orchestra." The same words, though in larger letters, appeared on the sides and rear of the trailer. The trailer had one long scratch starting at its right rear. Someone, after a dance job and laughing, had backed it too fast up to the rear of a dance hall to be loaded.
     Inside the car were eight men and a woman. The woman sat in the front between Sully Johnson, who drove, and Frank Abernathy, the piano player. She slept with her head back against the seat, and the yellow blouse she wore with tight, matching yellow slacks was wrinkled. Her short blonde hair was mussed, her mouth slightly open, and her lips dry. Frank's head rested against the window, his knees drawn up against the dash. In sleep, the downward slope of his eyebrows failed to give quite the mournful look they did when he was awake.
     All three of the men on the last seat were sleeping. Two of them had not taken off their dress shirts from the job the night before; their bow ties were loosened, their shirt collars rumpled. The third man had slipped on a sport shirt, but it looked sweaty. They all appeared cramped and uncomfortable, their arms and legs poked out at various angles. Two of them were breathing in each other's faces.
     On the middle seat, one man remained awake. He sat next to the window, directly behind Sully Johnson. His dark, medium-length hair was still combed. Although his tie had been undone and his shirt loosened at the throat, he wore his dinner jacket from the night before. The slight stubble of beard darkened the paleness of his face, and the deep-set dark eyes gave him a slightly melancholy look, as if he were just returning from a party that had ended sadly. He sat staring out of the window, hands folded in his lap. His name was Danny McCullers.
     Danny watched the cars come toward them in the predawn, with their headlights glaring, giving them a wide-eyed, astonished look. They came by with a singing, close to the pavement, and really did not seem like cars at all, but something strange out of the night. He looked at the trees they passed, and at the fields, and he heard the railings of a bridge they went over. The pace never varied, speeding them toward another town, another dance job, another mass of the same people he had seen at every dance he had ever played. How many years was it now? About thirteen. No, it would be closer to fifteen or sixteen, because he was fifteen years old when he played his first job, the first real job outside of a high school thing he had done free.
     He had been playing trumpet then. It was a year or so later that he had shifted over to bass. He had done this, though, only when he realized, with a sense of depression and frustration, that he just couldn't make it on trumpet. He didn't have the talent for it, or the lip, or something. He was lacking, and it was his first real failure at a thing he had wanted desperately to do. But then there was a taste of compensating joy in finding that he had an excellent sense of rhythm and picked up bass very well. He went after the instrument almost desperately, practicing with a fury that left his fingers raw and his arms aching. He was lucky too, for there was a shortage of bass men in the area and he got plenty of work quickly. At every job for months, though, his fingers were taped, and sometimes he had to put tape over bandages because his fingers, swollen and infected, pained so much. Thinking about it, Danny rubbed the fingertips of both hands with his thumbs. The thick calluses gave his fingertips a slightly spatulate look.
     But that first job, it had been beautiful—arriving freshly bathed, shaved, and in a clean shirt—having all the people watch them set up their instruments and tune up, smelling the brass and fine oil of the horns; then playing, and watching the notes go by, and hearing the drummer beside him pushing the beat; then women dancing close to the bandstand, their shoulders white and soft and always looking nicely perfumed; then at intermission, splitting a pint four ways in the driveway beside the band car and not really liking the taste of it, but being excited by the idea of it; then back inside, finishing the dance and packing up afterwards and hanging around; being offered a drink by a woman who was slightly drunker than her husband and talking to them; then the band driving back late at night and stopping for something to eat and having everyone look at them because they were dressed alike and, most certainly, musicians.
     That, thought Danny, was a long time ago. Yet, there must be some of that feeling still with me. There would have to be.
     He reached into his shirt pocket for his lighter and a cigarette. After he lit it, he rubbed his tongue over his teeth.
     Sully spoke. "Can't you sleep, Danny?"
     "Oh, I've been dozing."
     "We're going to stop for something to eat before too long."
     "You want me to drive?"
     "No thanks, Danny, I'm okay."
     Sully rarely let anyone else drive. Most of the musicians were glad of it. Sully seemed to be able to numb himself and drive for hours without being conscious of doing it, just moving ahead toward another town.
      "How much farther is it to ... where is it we're playing?"
     "Clint's Beach," Sully said. "Oh, I figure two and a half hours, not counting time for something to eat. I've never been there. It's just a one-horse town, or I should say a one-boat town, judging from the map. It's right on the coast.      They've started this annual festival of some kind, you know. Cats come from all over." He paused. "We'll get set up as soon as we get there and then check in at the hotel. Have a chance to sleep damn near all day long."
     Danny finished his cigarette and lowered the window enough to throw it out. He felt the cool air slip across his face, and he left the window cracked slightly. He put his head back against the imitation-leather seat and closed his eyes. They burned, and he didn't realize until then how completely exhausted he was.
     "How do you feel, Danny?" Sully asked.
     Danny opened his eyes. That question, which used to seem so like a greeting rather than a question, now weighed heavily and touched a spot of depression, almost panic, in Danny. "Oh, I feel pretty good, thanks, Sully. Sort of tired." Knowing he could detect nothing by doing it, Danny touched his right side, just above the belt, with his fingers and then let the fingers roam up to his left chest. "Thanks for asking."
     "What?"
     Danny leaned forward. "I said thanks for asking."
     "Oh."
     For several minutes, neither of them said anything. Danny tried not to get depressed. He didn't want to talk, not to Sully or anyone. He didn't want to have to think about it.
     Then Sully asked, "Have you decided what you're going to do?"
     Danny reached for another cigarette. His first thought was to tell Sully he was trying to sleep, but he lit his cigarette, inhaling deeply and wearily. "I guess, Sully, I really ought to get out of this business." He leaned forward so he did not have to speak loudly. "That's what the doctor said I ought to do."
     "Well, of course, I don't want to try to tell you how to run your life," Sully said, "but it seems to me that if you ate better and, you know, cut down on your drinking and tried to get plenty of rest—as much as possible—you wouldn't have to quit the band business."
     "Yeah, I know it. I've thought about that," Danny said. There was the slightest trace of irritation in his voice.
     "Well, I didn't mean to be, you know, trying to preach to you or anything. You know you've got a job with me as long as I stay in the business."
     "I appreciate that, Sully. I'm going to try to decide this weekend. I've been thinking about it practically all night."
     Sully took one hand off the steering wheel and rubbed the back of his neck. "We ought to see some place to stop for a bite before long."
     Danny leaned back again and closed his eyes. Yes, thinking about it, he said to himself. Yes, thinking about whether you've got the strength and the will and the desire to change your whole way of life. And for a man like Sully, almost forty-five, a man who doesn't smoke, who doesn't drink, who does everything mechanically and numbly, who, sure, lays a few women-—but he's probably got that down to a formula now too—for a man who's been able to live through years of playing for dances and parties, whose band was semi-name during the war, and who's now playing the cheap circuit with a tenor band and adjusted to it, who's been able to put money away and buy half interest in a music store—just how the hell can somebody like that understand anything about somebody like me, and ... oh, crap. Just crap on it all. For him, this isn't a way of living, this isn't his life, the one he dreamed of a long time ago; this is just a business, a lousy, stinking business. Danny forced himself to be a little more settled. After all, he thought quietly, maybe that's what it should be, but it could never be for me. No sense, though, in flailing out at Sully. He didn't get you in the shape you're in, and if he can move through it all and keep himself numb and uninvolved, more power to him.
     The shape you're in, he repeated to himself. Nothing sexy. No sexy disease. Just normal deterioration of the body from abnormal treatment of it: an irregular heartbeat and the early stages of cirrhosis of the liver. And I thought you at least had to have a pot on you to have that. The heart, which would probably get him before the liver, was discovered two years ago, when he was only twenty-nine. It had not improved. Nor had his liver.
     He remembered it well, when it had all been discovered. The band had a six-day layover, something unusual for them, and he'd been drinking heavier than usual, thinking about the six days. He was going home, or at least to the town he had once considered home, a small sleepy town where his father ran one of the three drugstores. He had thought about how pleasant it would be to sit in the drugstore, smelling the curiously sweet mixture of syrups and medicines that had been poured into neatly labeled bottles over the years, and to listen to the lazy whir of the big four-bladed overhead fans, and to watch the girls come in through the sun-framed door, wearing light cotton, and to look at them as they drank Cokes with straws between their lips.
     He had looked forward to it eagerly. After the job on Thursday night, he had taken a train—getting on the train, talking to a fat girl he sat beside, and slipping back into the men's room for drinks—-and had ridden all night. Then after a one-hour wait, he had caught a bus—there had been more drinking at the bus station, and he'd even given a guy in the men's room a drink, something he'd never done before—and had sat far in the rear, in case he wanted to take another drink or two, which he did after a quick, drugged-like sleep. Two people had turned to look at him because they could smell the whisky. At about nine o'clock that morning, the bus had pulled into the town—really his hometown?—and he'd taken a cab, driven by someone he'd never seen before, to the house in which his father now lived with Danny's oldest sister, a woman divorced many years before, after one child, who now went about her role with a grim acceptance, braced by punctual and long readings from the Bible. Her child, a boy, was thin and blond and pale—he must be about ten or twelve now—who went to school with neither enthusiasm nor reluctance, just went. He worked jigsaw puzzles by the dozen.
     Danny had thought in terms of the boy's being in school that morning, then realized again it was summer. But his father would have been at the store since slightly before eight, he knew.
     Danny's mother had died the fall that he was seventeen. It had been a smoky, good-smelling day in late October. But, no, he didn't want to think about it. He tried not to think about it, to think only of the summers when he was growing up and watching her laugh while she played the piano. She was never serious when playing the piano, and she always seemed to laugh rather than sing. That was so long ago.
     The cab stopped in front of the two-story white house. A very white house. Closed-in-looking, but very white. He paid the cab driver and started to tip him, but the driver wasn't used to tips, so Danny pocketed the change, got his small bag himself, a bag he was proud of, and walked toward the house. He walked rather slowly, and every detail of the house and yard stood out clearly to him. The garden hose was half-hidden, coiled neatly by the spigot at the porch. The green porch chairs were perfectly in line, like rows of medicine bottles. He opened the door and stepped into the living room with its almost antique furniture.
     "Mary?" he called.
     Her son appeared quickly to stand perfectly still, looking at him.
     "Hello, Jimmie. How's the boy?"
     "Hello," he said and came close to smiling.
     Danny set his bag down as Mary came from the back of the house. "Well, Mary, you back there with the milkman?"
     She smiled. "Well, I see your sinful views haven't changed." "Just judging everyone by myself." He grinned, and they stood looking at each other. They did not embrace or even touch hands.
     "How was your trip, Danny?"
     He knew she could smell the whisky on him. "Oh, fine. Sort of rough though. Traveled all night. When I got here I took me a great big drink. Whee!"
     She smiled slightly.
     He said, "But the trip was made immensely more enjoyable because I sat beside a beautiful little slip of a girl." He grinned. "She fell passionately in love with me, I think."
     "Are you tired?"
     The grin failed. "A little. I thought I'd shave and then go to see Daddy." It's still Daddy, he thought. "Then come back and take a nap." He picked up his bag.
     "You know where the room is," Mary said. "And, Danny..." He stopped. "It's good to have you back for a while."
     With a sweep of his free arm: "The widely acclaimed musician returneth."
     He started up the stairs, and again she stopped him. "Danny ... try not to ... worry him, make him worried about you." Looking down at her, Danny noticed gray at the part in her hair as she stood in the rays of the morning sun. Quietly he said, "I'll try not to, Mary." There was only a moment's pause, and then he smiled broadly and said, "Now to make my toilet." Mary glanced at Jimmie, and Danny bowed slightly and said, "Littlejimmie, that means nothing more than that I'm going to shave."
     He put his bag down in the seldom-used guest room. He glanced around at the furnishings, most of which had come from his grandmother's old house when she died. The closed- in unused air of the house was even more pronounced in here. He opened his bag and took out one of the two pints he had left. He had discarded an empty third one. He walked quickly to the bathroom and brought back a glass half-filled with water. Breaking the seal on the bottle, he filled the glass the rest of the way with whisky. He noticed his hands were shaking. Hastily he lit a cigarette and sat down on the edge of the bed. He looked at the whisky just a moment before he took a great gulp of it. Then he sat there for a minute or two longer, waiting for the whisky to hit, before he took another swallow. He held the glass tightly in his hand. The drink was more than half gone. He took another fast swallow, and stood up. Suddenly he wanted to leave the house, to be gone, to be back on a train, going, going, back to a hotel room—a modernistic, impersonal hotel room with no memories—to watch neon lights, to sit in a cocktail lounge, to smell the perfume of a woman of a moment. He walked back to the bedside table and stood there. Without really looking, he reached down and picked up the glass and drained it and stood holding the glass, looking out the window at the slight breeze moving the maple leaves. He could hear the ticking of the large clock on the dresser. It too had belonged to his grandmother. He checked its time against his wristwatch. Quarter to ten. Mary had wound it and set it. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Then he took his shaving kit, another of his few possessions and another he was proud of, from the bag, poured a good shot in the glass, and walked slowly to the bathroom. Before he shaved, he took a swallow from the glass. He used after-shave lotion much more liberally than usual.
     "Like a French whore," he said to the mirror, studying himself only enough to know that his eyes looked tired. Years ago he had stopped really studying himself in the mirror. It was just that now he knew what he faced and was vaguely satisfied with it.
     He allowed himself only one more drink, a small one, before he went downstairs.
     "Don't you want something to eat?" Mary asked.
     "No, thanks. I had a sandwich at a rest stop back up the road," he lied. He left the house to walk the seven blocks to the drugstore. Except for a brief nighttime visit the previous fall, it was the first time he had been back to the town in almost two years. Twice, though, in that time, his father had driven to cities not far away where the band was playing. On one of the visits, Danny had been very drunk, but still had managed to keep it somewhat hidden from his father.
     Nothing seemed truly familiar to Danny as he walked toward the store. The houses and streets he had seen so often took on the appearance of something from an almost-forgotten dream. Until he got within a block of the store, he had met only a half dozen people, none of whom he knew. He recognized the head barber in the shop he passed, and the barber waved at him and motioned for him to come in, but Danny held up his wristwatch and grinned and waved. He slowed as he approached the drugstore, then mentally braced himself and hurried through the door. All the old familiar odors came sweeping over him, and he felt like running away. Instead, he went straight to the back where he could see his father behind the high counter, head bent over a prescription.
     "Hello, Daddy," he said quietly.
     His father looked up, then smiled brightly. As always he was extremely close-shaved, and his sand-colored hair, heavily gray now but only slightly receding, was combed immaculately. Danny never remembered seeing him when his hair wasn't combed. He wore rimless glasses that always seemed to reflect so much light it was difficult to see his eyes. He wore a dark maroon bow tie, and his fingernails were perfectly clipped. Everything about him was as neatly in place as the bottles on his shelves. Danny realized, to his surprise, that it was the first time he had been struck by this fact. It was just something he had known without forming that knowledge into anything more than a whirling puff of smoke somewhere far back in his mind. And more clearly than he ever had before, he saw the great chasm of difference between his mother and his father.
     "Danny Boy! How are you? What time did you get in? How was the trip?" Danny's father went around and came out from behind the counter. They shook hands warmly, and his father put his hand on Danny's shoulder.
     "I got in about nine. The trip was okay. Traveled all night. I went to the house and shaved." He rubbed his face as he spoke, looking at his father's cheeks and chin.
     "Did you see Mary?"
     "Yes, I saw Mary. She looks fine."
     "How about something to eat?"
     "I've had something, thanks."
     "Coffee?"
     "I'll take a Coke."
     "Sue, bring a couple of Cokes over to the table."
     Danny glanced at the young girl behind the counter. A frail little girl about seventeen. She had been eying him curiously, he realized. He and his father sat at the table, a heavy table with sturdy legs, but with wobbly, round-seated chairs on almost-wire legs that didn't match at all. The three tables and the chairs had been there as long as Danny could remember. He watched the girl carrying the Cokes toward them and then forgot about her. His father was still smiling happily, and Danny knew he had to call up, with all that was left within him, the countenance of gaiety that was expected. Oh, goddamn it! he thought. Well, you're the one that's made the reputation. Nobody asked you to do it.
     The girl set the Cokes down and smiled shyly and went back to the fountain. "Your latest girl friend, Daddy?"
     His father laughed. "I see you haven't changed a bit." Danny grinned broadly. "Did you expect me to?" It was difficult for him. He felt tired, and the glow of the drinks had dimmed. The muscles along the backs of his shoulders ached. He shifted in his chair slightly and tried leaning back. He knew that his father was watching him closely. Danny said, "Boy, I'm sort of tired. I took a big drink before I shaved, but that didn't help."
     Seriously, and so softly Danny could hardly hear, his father said, "How much are you drinking, Danny?"
     Again from the depths: "Oh, probably a bit too much, but you know how it is. We play hard and we drink hard." He laughed. "But it's nothing to worry about. You just always see me at my worst."
     His father smiled weakly. "Your health, you know..." and his voice trailed off to nothing.
     Danny felt a little faint. He heard the fans overhead and smelled the store. Another sweep of panic came over him, and he desperately wanted to leave. The Coke tasted flat, and he lit another cigarette. His hands trembled.
     "Are you taking anything for your nerves?"
     "No, they're all right. It's just that I'm tired today." The last he said almost impatiently.
     "I'm not trying to lecture you. I've never done that. Perhaps I should have. Maybe I failed there, but..."
     Danny put his hand on his father's arm. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to sound that way." After a pause, and almost to himself, he said, "No, you've never lectured me."
     "Well," his father said, brightening, "you're home now for a few days, and you can rest and sleep, get plenty to eat. Regular meals. I'll give you some vitamins." .
     A Negro woman with two small children had come in and was standing by the prescription counter. Danny's father went back to wait on her. Danny sat smoking and sipping his Coke, looking toward the sunlight at the doorway. No pretty young girls in cotton have come in to sip drinks through a straw, he thought, smiling almost bitterly to himself. Then two girls he did not know came in and ordered coffee. One of them glanced at him and said something to the other, and they both looked at him. Danny half smiled and nodded, and they glanced at each other and smiled briefly as though they had been caught at something. Where are all the pretty girls who used to sip Cokes through a straw? Danny looked at the table, then ducked his cigarette.
     Sitting there, for the moment calm and almost motionless, he thought about his father. I really do love him. We don't have to speak the same language. That's not really necessary for a person to love, not when that person's your father; nor do I suppose it's necessary for the father to be able to speak with the son in order to love. He certainly loves me, and I him. He loved Mother, of course, and there was that difference. My mother. Her son. An absurdly exaggerated male version of her. "We'll play a game of make-believe, and we'll pretend we're anything we want to be, anywhere we want to be." And then her bright, almost mischievous laugh. Danny lit another cigarette because, for a split second there, he thought he actually heard that laugh echoing from somewhere. His hands trembled again, and he was perspiring slightly. His forehead felt cold and damp.
     His father came back to the table. "Never seen so many summer colds before."
     Danny wasn't listening. He felt as though he couldn't get his breath. He forced a yawn and gulped in air. "I think I'll run on back to the house and sleep awhile, or as this Australian player I know says, 'Take myself asleep.'"
     "Take myself a sleep. That's good."
     They stood up and walked slowly toward the front. Danny made himself not run. They were beside the fountain when an old man with a cane, who had seemed ancient to Danny when he was a boy, came tottering in. Danny's father spoke. "How are you this fine morning, Mr. Boykin? You remember my son Danny."
     Danny smiled and nodded. The old man came up to them, leaning heavily on the cane. "Yes, indeed."
     "How are you, Mr. Boykin?"
     "Fair to middlin'! Fair to middlin'! Can't really complain too much. Doesn't really do for an old man to complain. And I've been getting on all right except for my back and this old leg here. Haven't caught a cold here this summer like most everyone else."
     As the man droned on, Danny noticed his father absently straightening out the cheese crackers so that all the labels were upright. His father smiled and nodded every few seconds while the man talked. Danny wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. He broke in, "I really must get on back to the house, Daddy. Excuse me. Nice to have seen you, Mr. Boykin." His legs seemed wildly erratic as he left the store and strode rapidly down the street. He avoided the barbershop and nodded hurriedly to a middle-aged woman from the past. Once out of the business district and on the street where his father lived, Danny slowed down and breathed a little more calmly. He came up the front walk, unseeing, and went into the house. Mary was coming down the stairs as he entered.
     "Did you see Daddy?"
     He smiled. "Yes, yes. We had a very pleasant talk."
     "That's nice. We're going to have some lunch soon."
     Danny controlled the nervousness in his voice, but he didn't try to smile. "I'm very tired, Mary. Very tired. I'm going to lie down. I'll get up when I'm hungry. I'd like a Coke to drink, and then I'm going to bed."
     "We don't have any Cokes, but we've got some Pepsi-Colas. I don't know how cold they are. We've got some real cold orange."
     "I'll get a Pepsi," Danny said and walked back to the kitchen. "Where's the opener?" he asked Mary, who had come in behind him. His voice sounded loud, so he smiled. Mary handed him the opener. He took a small sip, and his hands trembled visibly. He saw Mary looking at him. Jimmie walked in and stood in the doorway. Mary still looked at him, and he saw the concern in her eyes. He turned quickly to Jimmie and with a laugh said, "Why aren't you out chasing girls?" Jimmie smiled and looked at his mother and mumbled something. "Well, I'm going to go lie down. See you all later."
     Danny was breathing hard again when he reached the top of the stairs. He went into the room and took out the opened pint, fumbling slightly with the cap. He poured the glass two- thirds full and splashed in some Pepsi. He drank heavily, shuddering a bit after it had gone down. He took a small sip and then lit a cigarette. Again he gulped at the drink and, holding the glass, turned toward the window. With a soft cry, he said, "Oh, goddamn it, goddamn it, goddamn it." He wiped the tears out of his eyes and tried to breathe deeply, to control himself. He took a drag of the cigarette and then another swallow. He sat down quickly on the bed because he felt like he was going to vomit. His skin was extremely cold for a moment, and then the chill passed. He waited a few minutes and finished the drink. He sat still, waiting for the whisky. He could feel it now. He poured another drink, not quite as large as the first. He began slowly to take off his shoes and socks, his trousers and shirt. He put his cigarettes and lighter carefully on the bedside table. He had finished the second drink except for a small swallow. He took that and mixed another but did not drink it. He placed it on the bedside table. Wearing his shorts only, he stretched out on the bed, reached over and lit a cigarette and took two quick, deep drags and ducked it. He lay back.
     That's all he remembered until he opened his eyes as if he had not been asleep, and had a moment of quiet terror when he didn't even know where he was. Then he saw that it was late afternoon and knew that he must have slept. But he didn't remember getting drowsy. As he reached for the ducked cigarette, he saw...
     Blood was spattered over the pillow. He sat up quickly, still absently reaching for the cigarette. Blood was on his arm. His chest was splotched with blood. He looked at his arms and chest and felt his face. His hand brought away only a smear of blood. He felt his nose, but there was no blood. Lighting the cigarette as he went, he hurried into the bathroom, switched on the light, and peered at himself in the mirror.
     His lower lip on the right side was swollen and looked like a piece of raw liver. Blood was smeared over his mouth, chin, and neck. He threw the cigarette into the commode and wet a bathcloth and began slowly to wash himself. Had he fallen? Passed out and fallen? Smashed his lip between his teeth and the floor or a piece of furniture? He looked again at his lip. He turned from the mirror, puzzlement and fear on his face. His lip was chewed. It wasn't one single cut. It was chewed.
     Walking back to the room, he felt an aching just above the small of his back. When he sat down on the bed and leaned forward for another cigarette, the aching became so sharp he caught his breath. He straightened up and reached again and made it. Without really wanting it, he picked up the glass and took a swallow. He held the whisky in his mouth for a moment before it went down. It tasted flat. He walked over and poured more whisky in the glass so that the color of the Pepsi hardly showed. That was better. He sat on the bed. The pain was still there, in his back. He touched his lip.
     After he finished the drink, he put his trousers and shoes on and very slowly when downstairs. His back hurt most when he took a deep breath.
     "Well, you finally woke up, huh? We'll be ..." Then with alarm, Mary said, "What's the matter, Danny?"
     "I don't know."
     "What happened to your mouth?"
     "I don't know." He sat down on the love seat by the stairs. Mary came close and looked. "I must have bitten it."
     "What?"
     "And my back. Something is the matter with my back." He said it quietly, not complaining, but in puzzlement.
     "We'd better put something on that lip."
     "Mary, I wish you'd call Dr. Wilson."
     "He's not at his office now."
     "I wish you'd try to reach him."
     Mary looked at him, then went to the phone. She got the number from an address book and called the doctor's home. She finally reached him by calling the hospital.
     "Tell him I think I went to sleep and woke up this way." Danny listened to the one-sided conversation. "He says he'll meet you in the emergency room in twenty minutes."
     Danny stood up.
     Mary said, "I can call Daddy, and he can leave the store long enough to take you to the hospital. He'll be closing before long anyway."
     "I'll catch a cab. Call me one, will you, Mary? Tell him to be here in about ten minutes." He realized how depressed he sounded and how concerned Mary was. He made a lopsided grin. "Hell, I sound like an invalid, don't I?"
     She smiled, but the smile faded.
     He knew she'd wait until he'd left for the hospital before she called their father. "I'm going up and wash my face," he said. His back was a sharp ache.
     In his room he poured the last of the pint into the glass and mixed a little Pepsi with it. He took a knit short-sleeve sport shirt from his bag and slipped it on. Sitting on the bed, he finished the drink and opened his last pint and poured another. He tasted it. It was strong. He started to put it down, then said aloud, "To hell with it." And carrying the drink, he went downstairs. He sat on the love seat, and Mary brought him an ashtray.
     Jimmie came quietly in the front door. "What's the matter with your face?"
     "An irate husband got after me."
     "Huh?"
     "I cut it."
     Danny finished the drink when the cab pulled up. Walking to the car, he could feel his back. He could tell the drinks were having an effect, and he was glad of that. On the way to the hospital, he closed his eyes, and they hurt. A nurse was coming out of the emergency room door as he approached, and she told him to go in and have a seat. He sat on a small round stool and looked at a "no smoking" sign. In a few minutes Dr. Wilson, who remained ageless, came in. Danny took his shirt off and sat on the table. The doctor looked closely at his lip, then began fumbling with the blood pressure apparatus.
     "Do you know how you did it?"
     "No. I think I went to sleep. When I woke up it was this way."
     Dr. Wilson finished taking Danny's blood pressure and started taking his pulse. "What about your back?"
     "It aches pretty bad right here." Danny touched the center of his back, a couple or three inches above the beltline. "It wasn't hurting at all when I went to sleep."
     The doctor didn't say anything. He listened a long time to Danny's heart. He tapped his chest and listened again. He hung the stethoscope around his neck and put a cigarette in his mouth but didn't light it. "How much have you been drinking, Danny?"
     Danny hesitated for a moment. "It's hard to say, Dr. Wilson. For the past eight or nine days, I've been drinking pretty heavy. A fifth a day, I guess."
     "Been eating?"
     "Not much." Danny almost hated himself for automatically playing the role, but he grinned and said, "This is a fine thing, isn't it? Lie down and go to sleep and wake up like this."
     "You didn't go to sleep. Not like you think."
     "What?"
     He rolled the cigarette between his lips and looked straight at Danny. "You had an alcoholic convulsion."
     Danny stared at the doctor and then down at the floor. He looked up. "Can you smoke in here?"
     "Go ahead." The doctor didn't light his own cigarette, which was wet where he'd held it in his mouth. "Danny, I want you to spend a few days in the hospital. Your father said you'd be in town until about Wednesday."
     Danny thought about the pint back at the house. His hands felt sweaty. Perhaps the doctor knew, for he said, "We'll give you something to keep you calm. It won't be rough, Danny." Danny walked beside an orderly up the hall. Once the orderly put his hand lightly on Danny's elbow to guide him. They went into a private room, and the orderly helped Danny undress and put on a backless hospital gown. In a few minutes a nurse came in, and Danny turned over, and she gave him a shot in his hip. Then he slept. He remembered the food tray coming in, and he didn't eat. It was dark when his father came over bringing his bag. Danny wondered vaguely about the pint. Danny didn't talk to him much. Then there was a bottle of glucose hanging above him. He dozed again. He woke up needing to go the bathroom, and the bottle was almost empty. He called the orderly. Some time later another nurse came in and took the glucose away and gave him another shot, and when he woke up they were serving breakfast.
     Even that day was hazy with pills and shots, and Dr. Wilson came in for only a moment. Danny was terribly thirsty, and finally they brought an entire quart of tomato juice for him, and he drank it within an hour and then slept again. Later there was another tray of food and again sleep. But that night he woke up and went, in his own pajamas now, to the nurses' station. The middle-aged nurse there was very kind and gave him two pills, and he went back to the room and, in a little while, was asleep again.
     He ate some of his breakfast the next morning and then lay back because he was very tired and his back hurt. The nurse brought him something for the pain. He was lying with his eyes closed when Dr. Wilson came in. Later Danny walked down the hall for an electrocardiogram. When he came back, the nurse gave him another shot and he slept again.
     They had taken blood tests, but that afternoon the lab technician came in and shot a colorless liquid into the vein in Danny's right arm. She said that she would be back in forty-five minutes to take blood out of the other arm. "It's to check how well your liver is functioning," she explained. While he waited for her to return, Danny began to perspire, and he could smell himself. His skin smelled sourly of whisky. He looked out the window and listened to hospital noises and was depressed. For the first time, he noticed that the window screen was on the inside of the window and that it was made of heavy wire. He got out of bed and pushed on it. It would take a pickaxe to break through it. He saw that a key of some type was necessary to open it. He lay down. After a while the lab technician came back in, and Danny didn't watch her take out the blood.
     After supper, despite the coming of dusk, Danny felt good. Well, I needed the rest anyway, he thought. And I really don't know what I would have done with myself for six days around the house. But never again a prolonged drinking bout like that without eating. That's what did it, I'm sure. He even flirted with the nurse when she brought two pills after supper.
     At a quarter after seven Mary and his father came in. They looked more cheerful. They didn't ask about his drinking, but Danny volunteered that he was going to watch it very closely. After visiting hours though, when the hospital began to get quiet, the depression came back. He could smell the whisky again on his shoulders, and the pillow was damp behind his head. At eight-thirty the nurse gave him a sleeping pill, but around two he woke up and smoked a cigarette. He tried to go back to sleep and couldn't, so he went down to the nurses' station, and the middle-aged woman was there with a young, stout nurse. They talked with him, and the young nurse flirted, and Danny went along with it. The middle-aged nurse, when the young one had gone away for a minute, confided to him that her husband had been an alcoholic for twenty years. Danny resented the implication, but tried not to show it. She gave him two more of the same kind of pills and told him to keep quiet about it. He thanked her and smiled and went back to his room and went to sleep.
     The next morning he felt fine. He was cheerful with the nurses and ate most of his breakfast. Then he shaved and felt even better. He kept rubbing his face. The swelling of his lip had gone down some, but still looked purple and bad, and his back didn't hurt too much if he changed positions often and if they kept up the pills.
     Shortly before ten Dr. Wilson came in, followed by a nurse. Danny, sitting on the edge of the bed, greeted him cheerfully. He remembered he'd never seen the doctor really smile.
     "How are you sleeping?"
     "Fine."
     "Did you eat your breakfast?"
     "Yes, sir. Every bit of it, just about."
     With a slight motion of his hand, the doctor waved the nurse out of the room. He sat down beside the bed and put a cigarette in his mouth but didn't light it. Danny lit one. "Danny, tomorrow is Tuesday. I'm going to let you go home then because your father said you had to leave early Wednesday morning. Frankly, I'd like to keep you for several more days. Get you eating and sleeping well and really dried out."
     "I'm feeling good."
     The doctor looked at him for a long time, so long that Danny started to say something to get him talking again.
     Dr. Wilson took the cigarette out of his mouth, looked at the wet end, and put it back. "Danny, we've found a couple of things wrong with you. Nothing that a good diet, regular hours—and no whisky—can't help you overcome, or at least live with."
     Danny waited.
"I've already told your father. He came by before he went to work. He loves you, Danny." The doctor looked at him as if waiting for a reply.
     "I know he does," Danny said softly. "I love him."
     The doctor looked at his cigarette again. "Son, you've got an irregular heartbeat —nothing too serious, I think." He took a deep breath. "But your liver isn't functioning as well as I'd like it to. You can't do without it any more than you can your heart."
     "Yes, I know."
     "I'm going to give you something to keep you calm and some vitamins."
     "What about my back? When will it get well?"
     "It'll be a couple or three months before the pain goes completely away. I'll give you something for that too."
     "How in the world did I do it?"
     "You were in convulsions. You were rigid and jerking." Danny pictured himself lying on the bed, chewing his lip, his back arched and rigid. He shook the picture away.
     There was a pause, and then Dr. Wilson said, "Do you know why you drink, Danny?"
     The old Danny, smiling: "Oh, I drink to get drunk and have a good time."
     Another pause and an inspection of the unlit cigarette. "When did you start drinking heavily? After the divorce?" Danny became cold and factual. "We both drank together, moderately heavy at first. It increased during the three years. I drank more right after we ... right after we separated. Then it leveled off. This was a bad bout. I don't know why I was drinking so much."
     The silence dragged on. With sympathy showing through his eyes, Dr. Wilson asked, "Do you want to die?"
     Danny put the cigarette out. "I don't know, doctor," he said softly. Dr. Wilson looked at the cigarette again. Danny straightened up despite the pain in his back. He smiled brightly. "Of course I don't want to die. Who the hell wants to die? Nobody wants to die. That's a crazy question."
     Dr. Wilson got up slowly. He looked at Danny. "Sure it is," he said.
     Danny felt the band car slowing down and opened his eyes. Dawn was there. As the car slowed, he could feel the swaying trailer pushing against it. They were pulling off the highway onto the graveled drive of a service station-restaurant. Danny could hear the tires on the gravel. Sully pulled up beside one of the two old-fashioned, glass-topped gasoline pumps and switched the motor off.
     The sleepers began to stir.

copyright © 2004 Joseph L.S. Terrell

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